Creating an email only user account

[Guest Ralgha]

Forgive me if this is the wrong forum, but I couldn't find one that fit better.

 

How would one create an email only account? Is it as simple as setting the shell to /bin/false?

 

What would I set the home directory to? /dev/null?

 

Thanks.

[aru]

Forgive me if this is the wrong forum, but I couldn't find one that fit better.

 

How would one create an email only account?  Is it as simple as setting the shell to /bin/false?

or to /bin/true

or maybe even to /sbin/nologin

What would I set the home directory to?  /dev/null?

Nope, that will rise an error since /dev/null is a file, not a directory. What about /var/spool/mail

You don't need to care at all since you won't allow logins from that user. Another idea could be to create a /home/nologin directory owned by root w/o w permissions for group/others

 

I'm not an expert, but I'd do something like this:

~# useradd -M -d '/var/spool/mail' -s /bin/false USERNAME

 

Probably you'll need to add /bin/false to the list of shells on /etc/shells. Also, it would be a good idea to create a "mailonly" group and put inside all those users.

 

I don't know if you should add a password for that kind of user or not, probably yes.

 

Btw, if I'm not wrong, some mail servers can do the task of setting mail only users for you.

[baudolino]

set the shell to the full path of the mail reader you would like the new user to use. (you will need to add the full path of the mail reader to the list of shells /etc/shells)